What the scope project means to this student is:
1.) Budget cuts
The U of A has been cutting classes and library hours
every year since I started here 4 yrs ago. The project
that is not going to be worth a hill of shit to the
scientific community is costing the students and taxpayers
over $33 million.
2.) Violation of Apache sacred land.
The U of A in partnership with the Vatican has stated that
the beliefs of the environmentalists and Apaches are 'a kind
of religiosity to which I cannot subscribe and which must be
suppressed with all the force that we can muster.' Father
Coyne, Jesuit Priest, head of the Vatican Observatory and
is charge of the Vatican Telescope under construction on
Mt. Graham.
3.) A direct action to curb the ESA
The precedent set here will be used by others in the future to
side step the Endangered Species Act.
This project takes huge amounts of money out of education and dumps
it into a pet project of the Vatican and U of A administrators, like
President Pacheco.
The name of one of the telescopes is Columbus... How appropriate that
a violation of Native American Sacred Land be named Columbus. Also,
to the best of my research, the U of A is the only University in the
U.S. to bring legal action against Native Americans.
Here is a little something that has been gnawing at me since Columbus
Day, when there was a sit in non-violent demonstration at the U of A in
protest to the Mt. Graham telescope project. Why did the arrests here,
and not else where in the country, bring about a Grand Jury investigation?
for more info on Mt. Graham contact:
Friends of Mt. Graham
PO Box 41822
Tucson, AZ 85717-1822 USA